Sun Acknowledges Acquisition Misfires

Sun Acknowledges Acquisition Misfires: “Sun acquired Diba to jump-start its effort to spawn a world of Internet-connected gadgets that would run programs written in Sun’s Java language.” I was a part of the Diba acquisition. That it was a mistake was apparent to everyone fairly quickly. Diba had been limping along on life support for the better part of a year. The employees were demoralized and spiteful of management. Many of the top people in the company immediately quit Sun. We were never integrated into Sun; they put us on a floor by ourselves in the hardware group. Diba was a consumer play, and Sun is not. We weren’t given any direction when the acquisition completed, other than to continue to work on the set-top box. It became clear to us that Sun had no idea what to do with us. About half of the employees who were retained after the acquisition left within a year. I think the remaining group was finally disbanded recently.